A Blog About Regenerative Agriculture

The only Glyphosate free bread in this country are the organic loaves baked by Fritz Schoon in Stellenbosch. (Every loaf tested in the supermarkets contains Glyphosate). Not only is he using James Moffett’s organic heirloom wheat he is stone grinding it in his bakery and immediately turning it into bread. This results in the full benefits of whole grain. No oxidising, no removal of the bran…in short wheat that has not been castrated.

Genuine grass fed beef (not the kind that is finished on grain/urea/chicken manure/molasses) is also free of Glyphosate.

Angus

12 November 2015

Glyphosate – the carcinogen you are ingesting daily.

One consistent theme of this column is the fact that human beings are committing species wide suicide. South Africans’ daily consumption of Glyphosate is the first of many examples to back up this view.

Glyphosate is found in every loaf of bread sold in every shop in this country. It is in all processed foods, tinned foods and ready made meals as these all contain maize and soya and their derivatives (I used to work with derivatives at Goldman Sachs and this is not the type I am referring to). Finally it is in all chicken, pork, beef and lamb. (The exceptions being genuine grass fed beef and lamb off the Karoo veld, which is much rarer than you think.)

Glyphosate is the active ingredient in the world’s most widely used agricultural chemical. Before explaining what it does to humans, apart from being a carcinogen (cancer causing) let me first explain how it gets into your food and into human breastmilk and into our drinking water.

Glyphosate is sprayed onto all the grain crops that you eat or onto the food the animals that you eat eat. Glyphosate bioaccumulates. Cooking does not kill Glyphosate.

I will elaborate on each of the problems I am about to mention below. The problems that Glyphosate causes in humans is first, it chelates micro nutrients, second, it damages your gut bacteria as it destroys their Shikimate pathway and third, it damages the critical cytochrome enzymes.

Before delving a little deeper lets understand that GMO is the Trojan Horse by which the big global seed companies (the top 3 control 50% of the market) are attempting to gain control of the world’s food system. Through Glyphosate resistant seed and Terminator genes they make it very difficult for farmers to resist them. The entire agricultural academic world is funded by these companies and so all students are taught that this toxic form of agriculture is normal and necessary.

99% of the soya and 84% of the maize grown in South Africa is GMO (genetically modified organism). This means that these plants have been bred to withstand the weedkiller (herbicide) whose active ingredient is Glyphosate and which kills all plants that are not GMO. On the face of it, it appears to be a panacea for the farmer who does not have to use any other chemicals to kill those opportunistic weeds or till his land to remove the weeds. His joy however is short lived as not only are there now 32 species of weeds that are resistant to Glyphosate, the farmer has to add micro nutrients to his soil as Glyphosate has chelated them.

Chelation is the process whereby, in this case, micro nutrients are bound to a substance, in this case Glyphosate, and made unavailable. My first experience of this power of Glyphosate was in 2010 when I started helping Spier Wine Farm convert to organic agriculture. I had the soils tested and there was very little Zinc, Managanese, Iron and Copper. Glyphosate was patented in 1964 as a chelator of micro nutrients. Spier used to, like almost every wine farm still does, spray Glyphosate in their vineyards for weed control.

The proponents of GMO say that it is safe for humans because it breaks the Shikimate pathway and humans don’t have it. However our gut bacteria do have the Shikimate pathway and one of the megatrends in medicine is the realisation that the gut is the foundation to our health.

The GMO proponents, who still cling to the canard that we need GMO to feed the world, try very hard to underplay the damage Glyphosate does to the CYP enzymes mentioned above.

I would encourage you to investigate this carcinogen that you are consuming.

Herewith an invite to visit me on the farm next time you are in Stellenbosch.

A final insight into the power of the pro GMO lobby is that No regulatory authority anywhere in the world requests mandatory chronic animal feeding studies to be performed for edible GMOs. It means that these companies have a lot to hide and our government is not protecting us. They (the food companies and the agricultural chemical companies) have spent to date $100 million to fight GMO labelling laws.

[…] to 60% of loaves of bread tested in the UK. (Incidentally, this article was written in 2015 on the high prevalence of glyphosate carcinogens in SA supermarket bread loaves). By inspiring a life of homebaked bread with organic […]

0

| Reply - Share

Please insert the code above to comment

Would you like to automatically emailed the response from Farmer Angus ∨

NoneNotify of new replies to this commentNotify of new replies to all my commentsNotify of all new follow-up comments

Guest

Anna-Marie Theron

3 months 12 days ago

I have been watching a documentary by Dr Patrick Gentempo on GMOs exposed. Anyone interested can google that. It pretty much confirms all in the above article and much more.

0

| Reply - Share

Please insert the code above to comment

Would you like to automatically emailed the response from Farmer Angus ∨

NoneNotify of new replies to this commentNotify of new replies to all my commentsNotify of all new follow-up comments

Guest

Anet Louw

5 months 2 days ago

Thank you for confirming what someone else posted on fb concerning wheat and other products in America. I have been diagnosed with gluten intolerance and found that certain gluten free products give the same symptoms….

0

| Reply - Share

Please insert the code above to comment

Would you like to automatically emailed the response from Farmer Angus ∨

NoneNotify of new replies to this commentNotify of new replies to all my commentsNotify of all new follow-up comments

Would you like to automatically emailed the response from Farmer Angus ∨

NoneNotify of new replies to this commentNotify of new replies to all my commentsNotify of all new follow-up comments

I grew up on a cattle ranch in Kwa-Zulu Natal. Studied Management Accounting at Stellenbosch University before stockbroking for Goldman Sachs in London for just over four years. Declined the offer of promotion, left my job and moved to South Africa. Built a clay home with inspiration from various people on the way leading to me become a biodynamic student, grass farmer and carbon sequestrator.